Chapter Thirteen
Walking onto the porch, I listen to Lucy complain on about her day. “Hank thinks he knows everything and won’t listen to me at all. He doesn’t see any need for the double oven, but how am I supposed to keep up with my baking without one?”
“Jarrod should be there soon,” I reply, saying the same thing I have said twice before. “I’m sure he will talk some sense into him.”
“But, he should listen to me,” she grumbles, clearly angry.
Sitting on the porch swing, I listen to her ramble on her complaints while watching as Chance walks toward me with a glass of sweet tea. After handing a glass to me, he sits down and plops his arm across the back of the swing. Without saying a word, he takes a long drink and lets out a sigh.
“Chance is done with the dishes,” I say, cutting her off. “I’m gonna have to call you back when I get home.”
After spending nearly three hours sitting by the pond, we had caught enough fish to fill both of our bellies. While Chance cleaned the fish, I got the coleslaw, fries, and hushpuppies made. Finally, I fried up the fish and we ate dinner. We started to wash dishes together, but then Lucy’s call took me away. I hated leaving him to wash the dishes on his own, but I also hated to miss her call. He pushed me away from the sink, telling me to go talk and he would finish up. If it had been anyone but Lucy, I would have ignored the call, but she would have been worried if I hadn’t answered.
We say a quick goodbye then I put my phone away and look to Chance. “Sorry about that. She likes to talk.”
“No problem, I’ve washed my fair share of dishes in my life,” he says, brushing a gentle kiss across my cheek then leaning his head back. “If you keep cooking for me all the time, I’m gonna start sporting a gut.”
“I haven’t even made you dessert yet,” I say, smiling at him. “I make an awesome triple layered chocolate pie.”
He smiles back and mumbles, “Next time, I want pie.”
If there was any doubt in my mind about the way Chance felt about me, today changed all of that. His gentle touches and sweet kisses has made it perfectly clear that he wants more than just a few casual dinner dates with me. In fact, I am pretty sure he wants a relationship. The more time I spend with him, the more I want the same thing.
Forcing myself to be brave and laying my head against the crook of his shoulder, I reply. “If you promise not to make me fish again, I’ll also make my cranberry stuffed pork chops with little red potatoes.”
Chance lets out a chuckle before agreeing. “That’s a deal.”
We are quiet for a few minutes, just enjoying the slight breeze. My mind again imagines a family living here, but this time the family is Chance’s and mine. Two pretty little girls and a handsome boy, all happy and wearing huge smiles on their faces.
“I still can’t believe you’ve never been fishing before,” he says with another chuckle. “I thought it was like a rite of passage growing up in Kentucky. Everyone I know has been baiting their own hook since they were five years old.”
I pull in a deep breath and try to give him the answer I need without giving him too much information about my past. “My childhood wasn’t exactly what you call normal. I never knew my dad, not sure if mom knows who he is, and my mom was never one to shower me with motherly attention.”
When I finally push out the last word, I feel like I have been hit by a train. It was as if every word that left my body had to be forced out, causing me pain on the way. I know I didn’t tell him much, but that little bit of information is more than Jarrod got out of me for years. Even now, he doesn’t know a lot about my past, only knows my mom was an alcoholic and drug addict that did not take care of me.
He pulls in a deep breath and asks, “You want to tell me about it?”
“Not really,” I answer, knowing that I will have to give him something or he will just keep asking. “Can we just leave it with her being a bad mom for now?”
His eyes linger on me as he contemplates his answer. He nods his head but doesn’t say a word. Instead, he just starts rocking the swing a little slower. When his eyes finally move off me, I let out a relieved breath, thinking he has given up for now.
“When I was younger, my mom always had bruises damn near every day. Most of the time they were hidden by her clothes, but there were times her face was so bruised she couldn’t leave the house without being asked questions,” he says, completely throwing me with his change of subject. “It happened so often that I never even asked her about it. I just believed my dad when he said she was clumsy.”
My stomach flips over when the realization of where he is going with this conversation hits me. I’m not sure exactly what he is going to tell me, at least not the details, but I know it is not going to be good. In fact, it is probably going to be really bad. That doesn’t matter though; I’m going to listen to every word he has to say.
Taking in a deep breath, I force myself to ask, “She wasn’t clumsy, was she?”
“I saw him grab her all the time, give her a little shake now and then, and even watched him push her around more than once. Hell, I saw it so often that I didn’t think nothing of it. I didn’t even realize that it was wrong; I thought that’s just what fathers did to mothers,” Chance mumbles, not truly answering my question, moving his hand from the back of the swing to my shoulder. “Even after watching him with her, I never thought of my father as a violent man. I knew he could be distant and selfish, but never violent.”
He blows out a frustrated breath and pulls his arm from around me. A second later, he jumps from the swing and walks to the other end of the porch. He paces back and forth for a minute, as if he just can’t stay still. Finally, he stops and looks at me.
“The first time he hit her in front of me, I was in middle school. He hit her so damn hard that she went flying to the floor,” he explains, running a hand over his face. “Even I was smart enough to know that shit wasn’t normal.”
“No,” I mumble, feeling my heart ache for him and for Sylvia. “That wasn’t normal.”
“After that, the beatings became more frequent and Dad didn’t care if Adam and I were standing right there when he did it,” he says with an agitated shake of his head. “I tried to get between them, but I always ended up just making it worse on Mom, so I finally just started staying away from the house as much as possible.”
The strain in his words let me know how much that confession cost him, and I realize I have to say something right now to take the guilt off his shoulders. “You were a kid, Chance. It wasn’t your place to make your dad stop hurting Sylvia.”
“When I was fifteen years old, I came in late one night. It was after a football game where we won the regional championship. I stayed out way past my curfew and partied with my friends.” Chance turns away, looking toward the yard. “When I first walked into the house, I expected Mom and Dad to be downstairs waiting for me. I figured I was gonna get my ass chewed out for breaking curfew. Instead, the whole house was dark. It was so damn quiet I could have heard a pin drop.”
My stomach drops again, causing bile to rise up my throat, knowing what he is about to tell me is going to be even worse than I thought. It drops again as the realization of why he is telling me about his childhood hits me. He is sharing his past with me in hopes that I will share mine with him. Just the thought of doing what he wants scares the hell out of me, but now is not the time to think about my own fears. I need to be focused on Chance and be here for the man that has been there for me since the day we met.
“I was feeling lucky that night, thought I had missed out on being punished. I remember walking through the house wearing a huge smile, knowing I got away with staying out late. I was so damn cocky that I didn’t even try to sneak to my room. Instead, I decided to go grab something to eat before heading to bed,” he says, dropping his head to stare at his feet. “As soon as I flipped on the light, my eyes landed on my mother. There she was right in front of the kitchen sink with her clothes ripped from her body, lying in a puddle of her own blood. I swear I thought she was dead.”
Tears fill my eyes as I imagine how much pain Sylvia must have went through. They start running down my face as my mind goes to a young Chance seeing his mother like that. Unable to sit still a minute longer, I push off the porch swing and walk over to him. My arms automatically wrap around him as I bury my face against his chest.
“I knew, just fucking knew, Dad had done it. I thought he had killed Mom, and I wanted to kill him,” he says, wrapping his arms around me. “Of course, the asshole had left the minute he realized how bad he had hurt her and ran off.”
So many things fly through my mind, questions that I want to ask, but I keep my mouth shut and just hold him. He stays quiet for a few moments, but his body is shaking in my arms. Finally, he gives me a tight squeeze and steps away.
“Mom ended up in the hospital for nearly a week. He had stabbed her six times but didn’t hit any major organs, thank God,” he states, whispering the last few words as if they were a prayer. “She had seven broken bones, starting with her right cheekbone and going all the way down to her femur.”
“Where is your father now?” I ask, unable to keep my mouth shut a second longer. “Did the police ever catch him?”
He slowly nods his head. “Sure did. They found him in some dive bar in Eddyville drunk off his ass.”
I chew on my bottom lip, wanting to ask him what happened, but I keep my mouth closed. This is Chance’s story to share; he needs to tell it in his own way and at his own pace. Still, it’s hard to not to ask a million questions.
“He was sentenced to six years. I’m not sure how or why, but he got out in only two and a half,” he states, his voice flat and emotionless. “By that time, Mom had divorced him, and Adam and I had changed our names, taking Mom’s maiden name and had done our best to forget that he had ever existed.”
Walking over to the porch swing, he plops down and leans his head against the back of the swing. “He ended up marrying some woman in Paducah. He beat her, too, and went back to jail. Last I heard, he was still in prison.”
I take a seat beside him, cuddling into his side and crying quietly. I sit silently, waiting for him to say something else. When he doesn’t say anything, I know it’s my turn to share my deep dark secrets. My heart starts racing as I consider where to start. Suddenly a memory hits me and I know it’s the perfect story to sum up my life.
“When I was around six or seven, I remember being at home all alone watching cartoons. I don’t know how long, maybe a day or two,” I say, taking in a deep breath for courage. “It could have been a week for all I know. I don’t remember being hungry, so I don’t think she was gone that long.”
Before I can say more, Chance asks a question. “Your mom left you alone when you were only six or seven?”
“It was normal by then, so I had probably been left alone most of my life.” I nod my head, staring at a bird flying past the house. “I was watching the Smurfs when she walked in with some guy I had never seen before. Strangers were always at our house and it never bothered me, but for some reason this guy scared me. I ran straight to my bedroom and hid under my bed for what seemed like forever.”
He stays quiet this time, but his arm tightens around me. I wait a minute, hoping he will say something or ask another question, but he doesn’t. I lose my nerve to say more until he bends down and places a kiss on my forehead.
“Sometime during the night, I got into my bed and went to sleep. I’m not sure how long after that the man came into my room,” I whisper the last words, not quite able to believe I am saying them out loud. “He was crawling into my bed when Mom walked in. She threw a fit. I had never seen her like that before. She was screaming, yelling, and hitting.”
“Of course, she was. The asshole shouldn’t have been anywhere near your bedroom,” he says, anger lancing through his voice.
This is the hard part, the part I don’t want to tell him about but I know I have to. He needs to know what he is getting into with me. If he wants me in his life, he deserves to know the truth. I may not be able to tell him everything just yet, but I can at least give him this part.
“No, Chance,” I mumble, trying to keep the pain from my voice. “She wasn’t mad at him; she was mad at me.”
“What the fuck?” he forces out, tightening his arm even more. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“She said I was trying to get his attention, said I always wanted everything that was hers.” I try to explain, knowing it makes no sense. “She was so mad at me that she made me spend the rest of the night sleeping in the shed.”
He is quiet, not asking a single question, but I can feel the tension running through his body. I swear anger is coming off him in waves, but it doesn’t scare me. If anything, it makes me feel protected. It’s at that moment I realize he makes me feel safe. That is something that even Hank and Jarrod never made me feel.
The realization is so freeing, I blurt it out. “I feel safe when I’m with you.”
Dragging me onto his lap, he cups my cheeks in his hands and gently brushes his lips over mine. “There is one thing I can promise you, Gypsy. You will always be safe with me.”